With DC United’s Jaime Moreno virtually certain to pass the recently retired Jason Kreis as Major League Soccer‘s all-time leading goal scorer soon, I thought it would be fun to create a list combining the leading goalscorers of MLS and the old NASL (these are regular season goals only):
| Player | Goals |
|---|---|
| Giorgio Chinaglia | 193 |
| Alan Willey | 129 |
| Karl-Heinz Granitza | 128 |
| Ron Futcher | 119 |
| Jason Kreis | 108 |
| Jaime Moreno* | 107 |
| Paul Child | 102 |
| Illja Mitic | 101 |
| Ante Razov* | 100 |
| Steve David | 100 |
| Jeff Cunningham* | 93 |
| Roy Lassiter | 88 |
| Ace Ntsoelengoe | 87 |
| Mike Stojanovic | 83 |
| Raul Diaz Arce | 82 |
| Alan Green | 82 |
| Taylor Twellman* | 79 |
| Preki | 79 |
| Carlos Ruiz* | 76 |
| Laurie Abrahams | 76 |
| Ade Coker | 74 |
| Branko Segota | 73 |
| Derek Smethurst | 73 |
| Ronald Cerritos | 71 |
| *Active | |
Personally, I think Taylor Twellman’s going to be the first guy in this era to get to 20012023 Edit: Had it not been for concussions, he might have.. Whatever number Moreno puts up there, Twellman’s going to get in a few years.
By the way, Chinaglia scored 49 goals in 41 playoff games, giving him 242. That’s still not a record, though, as Archie Stark of Bethlehem Steel, one of the powerhouse teams of the early 20th century, is credited with 253 goals in 293 American Soccer League games between 1921 and 1931. You may, of course, choose to give that accomplishment a lot, a little, or no consideration.
The ASL of the 1920s (which is different from the largely ethnic league of the same name of 1933-1983) was a serious, major league. It was also a different era for goalscorers. Kind of like how you’ll never see a 30-game winner in baseball again, it is highly unlikely anyone will equal Archie Stark’s 67 goals in 44 games in 1924-25, or the goalscoring feats of Davie Brown, Johnny Nelson, Bert Patenaude (I just named three American-born players, BTW) and some of the other ASL stars. But they still deserve to be remembered.